Confusing letter, as there was no authorised recipient?

A delegate decided under s 501(1) to refuse to grant the Applicant a visa. The Letter notifying the Applicant of the refusal included the following passages (emphasis added):

The Department cannot consider the refusal of your visa any further. However, you are entitled to apply to the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) for a merits review of this decision to refuse to grant you a Permanent Protection (Class XA) visa. An application for merits review of the decision must be given to the ART within nine (9) days after the day on which you are taken to have received this letter. The ART has no power to extend this timeframe.

As this letter was sent by email, you are taken to have received it at the end of the day it was transmitted. You have appointed an authorised recipient and are taken to have received this letter at the end of the day it was transmitted to your authorised recipient.

However, the Applicant had not appointed an authorised recipient.

Some of the questions to the Federal Court (FCA) were as follows:

Question 1: Do the observations in DFQ17 and Park "as to the strictness of the review system have all the more force in relation to the regime at issue in the present case, as the period in which an application for review must be commenced is only nine days (as compared with the 28-day period in DFQ17 and Park)"?

Question 2: Wa the Letter not clear because "it specified two different means by which the day triggering the running of the nine-day period was to be worked out: first, the day the Letter was transmitted by email to the Applicant; and second, the day the Letter was transmitted by email to the Applicant’s authorised recipient"?

Question 3: Can it be said that "the question of whether or not the notice states what it is required to state is to be assessed objectively by reference to the content of the notice", without "reference to the subjective knowledge of the person receiving it"?

Question 4: Can a notice that is otherwise deficient "be rendered clear, and thereby “saved”, by reason of the objective fact that the Applicant did not have an authorised recipient"?

Question 5: Did the parties proceed on the basis that the efficacy of the notification was an objective jurisdictional fact?

Question 6: Does s 494E(2) of the Act apply, so that the Letter is “taken to comply” with the content requirements, on the basis that there is “substantial compliance” with those requirements, and the failure to strictly comply “does not, or is not likely to, cause substantial prejudice to the person’s rights”?

The FCA answered those questions as follows: